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EGTN South Africa Update 6 – Back in Civilization

What a busy few days for us here! Last time we talked, Max and I had just arrived at QTO and we were getting settled in the new spot before jumping in to work the next day. After arriving on site the next morning, we started cranking away at the work and realized that we had a very good chance to get done early in order to spend a free day in Cape Town. It also worked out that this free day would be Max’s birthday, so we set forth to get it done. With that, I didn’t take many pictures as we were either at the guesthouse or on site. Nothing too crazy or worth taking a picture of in that regard. Hence, the picture up top recycled from my ATM talk. I didn’t even take that picture, kudos to our site host last time he was out there. That is the QTO shed in the lower left.

So on day 1 Max and I took everything back down to square one to build everything back up. All telescopes were taken out of the shed to re-plan deployment inside the shed and to handle the new scopes that were being installed. As a few of the sensors were currently assigned to customers, we were sure to stand those up at the end of the day. Day 2 had us finishing up the wiring and setup on the remainder of the telescopes and then focused them up. That is when the All Hands call fell, in the middle of our focusing. Since it was about 19:30 SAST, the All Hands was not on my radar so I was quite confused when the Skype call came in. Then Max and I were running around the shed until we heard ourselves called. Caught us in mid-action! We finished up the rest of that night with focus and FOR limits set for each scope. This officially set us on the course for leaving the day early.

On our last full day at QTO we headed out and completed the back up of observations as well as minor honey-do type tasks around the shed. We headed back that night to check focus on all sensors then called it a night before the road trip we had again today. With the shed completed, we hit the road this morning on the drive back into Cape Town and are now sitting safely back in civilization before our flight to Joburg. It is always interesting for me to get back to a major city after spending that much time in more remote towns. The big buildings, amount of people, traffic, etc. always catches me off guard! Here are a couple shots from our drive today (remember we are on the left side of the road and right side of the car here!):

So tonight we walked around the V&A Waterfront in downtown and grabbed dinner. Then headed back to the hotel to catch up on some sleep after the grind of the past few days. Tomorrow is Max’s birthday, so we are trying to get out and find a hike somewhere as well as poke around the city a little more. We’ll see what the birthday boy has up his sleeve.

Take care everyone and I’ll try to get some pictures of the town up on my next update!